Terminal

London Heathrow Terminal 5. Seven hours between flights. Not long enough to make it worthwhile to enter the country and travel into London. Long enough to wonder if I’ve entered the never-ending dystopia of a J.G. Ballard novel entitled Terminal. I sit in a cavernous room with hundreds of people all loitering, subdued and talking in hushed voices, as if heading, hoping, for hibernated unconsciousness. ‘As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.’ (Thoreau)

One of the films I watched on the flight here was Dunkirk. Before the film there was a warning for viewers that the film included scenes of aircraft in distress. As the film unfolded, the warning seemed misplaced. There were some aircraft in distress, but nothing compared with the destruction and death depicted on ships. Then I figured out that we were on an airplane, so perhaps some nervous passenger would watch Dunkirk and start imaging the worst. Taking the ferry from Dar es Salaam to Zannzibar, we were shown Home Alone.  All the seats on the ship faced the screen. It was unsettling to watch this Macaulay Culkin Christmas classic in the Indian Ocean that August day on a boat full of Muslim Tanzanians. But perhaps less dangerous than showing Dunkirk.

Read an article in the Financial Times on the drought in Cape Town. The city is currently on course to completely run out of water on April 21, the very day I’m scheduled to leave Cape Town and South Africa. J.G. Ballard did write an excellent novel entitled The Drought.